Several Directions at Once
by Tripleguess
Summary: in which Michael doesn't spot Sophie quite in time. AU, HMC.


**Several Directions at Once**  
><em>a Howl's Moving Castle novel fanfiction by Tripleguess<br>Genre: Drama/Humor  
>Rated PG<br>July 29, 2011_

Summary: in which Michael doesn't spot Sophie quite in time. AU.

_AN: What if, at page 115, Sophie had been successful in slipping off?_

The road over the hills to Upper Folding was a sandy line through the heather just downhill from the castle. Naturally. Calcifer would not make things inconvenient for Howl. Sophie set off toward it. She felt a little sad. She was going to miss Michael and Calcifer.

She had stopped to rest in the shade of a prickly old gorse bush when she heard shouting. The fact that she was on a semi-secret errand had her furtive instincts in top form. She pressed into the gorse bush without knowing why. The prickles stung her face, but her gray dress and gray hair matched the gray branches perfectly.

"You'll hide me, won't you?" she whispered. "You're a good bush. You don't want anyone to see me."

Maybe she was silly, talking to a bush, but she also felt a bit desperate and terribly exposed. The bush was loose and open and anyone taking a serious look would see her. She simply had to talk to Martha.

It was Michael. She recognized his voice now. Panic had made him hoarse. Guiltily, she recalled that Howl had sounded pretty firm on Michael keeping her quiet for the rest of the day. Now she'd set poor Michael up for a good telling off when Howl got back.

She turned her head and found that she could watch Michael plunging down the hill. The bush's interior was cobwebbed with more open air than branches. The castle was hard on Michael's heels, blowing anxious puffs of smoke from all four turrets. She watched as the apprentice stumbled about, looking frantically at random spots in the heather with the air of someone who has but five minutes to find a highly valuable item that belongs to somebody else and the whole of the moors to cover.

"Where could she have gone?" he wailed.

Sophie almost stood up and called to him. But Martha popped into her mind, twiddling her thumbs as though she were Lettie. Sophie squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands over her ears. Michael might get a scolding, but he'd be all right. She didn't think the wizard would turn him out for losing track of an old cleaning lady no one had wanted in the first place. Martha, on the other hand - there was no telling what Howl would do to her.

So she waited, whispering to the bush to keep herself from running to Michael, while Michael lurched this way and that, calling her name with heartbreaking desperation, and finally wandered off over the gently rolling hills. He checked clumps of heather and cattle wallows and ridiculously short bushes, but he never once looked at Sophie's bush. For that she was grateful. The hurt look he would have given her had he discovered her actually hiding from him would have been more than she could bear.

She waited until she was sure he was really gone and she could no longer hear the castle creaking and puffing. Then she stood up - everything popped as she did, stiff from crouching and tensing in a most unnatural manner - and felt the side of her face, where a few gorse prickles had embedded themselves in return for hiding her.

"You're a good bush, for all that," Sophie told it, pulling the prickles out one by one. "I hope you have plenty of cow patties to keep you green, as long as you live. But not so many prickles. Ouch!"

She rambled off, with many a guilty glance over her shoulder to make sure Michael wasn't pounding after her with a reproachful look on his face. There was the road, invitingly sandy and level after the bumpy moors. She followed it gratefully, talking to her stick and to the heather and the bees and the butterflies working the heather. She talked constantly. She did this to drown out the sharp little pain in her heart that had nothing to do with the scarecrow and everything to do with Michael's hoarse calls and Calcifer's worried smoke puffs.

"I'm sorry," she told a particularly beautiful dragonfly. "I really am. But they'll be all right."

"Martha's family," she told a surprised tortoise. It stopped munching on fresh shoots to stare at her, then decided she was no threat and got another mouthful.

"Family," Sophie repeated. "Family comes first. And I'm the eldest. It's my job to look out for her."

"Howl never wanted a cleaning lady," she said to a pair of marmots sitting on their hindquarters to watch her pass. "He never said I could stay. He just didn't tell me to leave. So I should be able to leave whenever I want to. It's not like he's paying me."

The marmots stamped their feet and whistled, then dove underground. Sophie looked up to find what had startled them and saw Wizard Howl strolling straight toward her, strumming his guitar and looking thoughtfully at the sky. So he was coming back already? Her otherwise frozen mind threw up the thought that he must have used a speed spell. She'd been so occupied with not thinking about Michael and Calcifer that she had lost track of time. She was almost at Upper Folding.

Howl hadn't seen her yet, but it was only a matter of seconds. There were no bushes, no trees, no hedges. There was nothing for it but to roll herself into the drainage ditch. She pressed herself against the side closest the road and willed her breathing to stop, which only made it go faster.

"I'm not here," she whispered. "I'm not here. There's only mud... no one can see me."

Immediately she felt mud soaking up through her dress. Drat it. She didn't think Mrs. Fairfax would let her in if she was covered with dirt. But she would have to worry about that later.

"No one can see me," she whispered, holding the thought close. Her knuckles were white on her stick. "No one can see me."

Some instinct warned her not to talk at Howl. She even kept her thoughts off of him, picturing in her mind the beautiful dragonfly she had seen earlier as Howl's footsteps crunched past. He was in no hurry, that was for sure. And his strumming was terribly off-key.

She wasn't sure what worried her more - the thought of being kept from warning Martha, or the thought of Howl laughing at her if he caught her hiding in a ditch. "You're not to tell anyone a word about this," she warned her stick.

It was quiet at last. She heard the marmots come out of their holes and chitter at each other. She rolled to her feet and peered cautiously over the edge of the ditch. Nothing. Howl's boot prints stood out damply. No one was in sight.

She clambered out of the ditch, wincing as her back popped. Lying twisted on her side did not seem to suit her old bones.

Her dress now sported a great smear of mud up her right side. She stared at it, blaming Howl for making her jump in the ditch and for making her deceive Michael and for making it necessary for her to come out here for Martha in the first place. It was all his fault. She raised her stick. "Get off!" she ordered the mud. "Off my dress!"

A few whacks removed most of the mud. It was satisfying to see it fall in great crusty flakes. It didn't seem to be the cling-on staining type but peeled off cleanly. She felt, as she gave a few finishing blows, that the residual stains were no more than might be attributed to a long walk such as she'd just undertaken. Mrs. Fairfax might not even notice them.

She didn't. Sophie had only to convince her that she was Mrs. Fairfax's newest apprentice's great-aunt - a complicated connection, to be sure, made more awkward in the explaining by the fact that it wasn't true - to be ushered through the house and into the garden on the other side, a sweet-smelling place heady with bees and the heat of summer. Lettie paced in the middle of it, her dress rippling with agitation as she came to the end of the path she had worn in the grass and turned sharply for another go round.

"Lettie," Mrs. Fairfax called. "Lettie, your great-aunt whosit is here!"

Sophie had only time to note that Mrs. Fairfax had called Lettie Lettie and that Lettie did not look at all like Martha but exactly like her own beautiful self before Lettie came flying at her, laughing and crying at once as she buried her face in Sophie's neck.

"Oh, Sophie! I've been so worried you can't think! Oh, how you must be suffering!"

Sophie found that she too was laughing and crying. It was several minutes before the sisters could compose themselves enough to untangle and both start talking at once, very rapidly, while Mrs. Fairfax dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and smiled mistily.

"-told me you were an old woman, he was asking so casually about you that I didn't think-"

"Lettie, but I thought you and Martha had switched places?"

"Oh, Mrs. Fairfax caught us straight off, but it's all been settled and I'm to stay here. But Sophie, what will you _do_?"

"- Michael will be so confused -"

"Such a spell, really, it's dreadful! That awful witch. Oh, the dog, I already sent him -"

"What dog?" Sophie finally managed to derail the lighting fast exchange. She and Lettie - and Martha too, for that matter - had never had trouble understanding each other when all talking at once, but she felt it rude to leave Mrs. Fairfax out of the conversation any longer. Anyway, Mrs. Fairfax looked as though she had information to add.

"The bespelled one, dear," Mrs. Fairfax explained. "When Lettie learned from Howl that you were staying at his castle, she was so upset that the dog said he'd go and keep an eye on you. He went at once, just after Howl left."

"Oh, no!" Sophie clutched at Lettie's wrists. "Does Howl know the dog?"

Lettie laughed guiltily. "Oh, yes. I asked him to bite Howl. But that was before -"

"Then the dog might lead him back here, without meaning to." Sophie was flustered by this thought. It seemed very important that she not be caught here by Howl. "He might come looking for me."

"Oh, Sophie!" Lettie started crying again. "Has he been dreadful to you?"

Sophie had to laugh. "No, not really," she confessed. "I mean, the green slime was dreadful, and he _is_ rather odd, but on the whole -"

"Green slime!" Lettie shuddered.

"It's not as bad as it sounds," Sophie assured her, but Lettie didn't look convinced. "In any case," Sophie continued hastily, as Lettie was now plucking suspiciously at her dress front to see if Sophie's heart had been sucked out, "I don't know where to go now. I don't want to go back to the castle, but the hat shop's empty now and to be honest I'd rather not work there again..."

Her heart gave an odd little twist here. She _was_ going to miss Michael and Calcifer. But Lettie and Fairfax had both brightened.

"Of course, Sophie dear, you mustn't go back!"

"-won't hear of it, living with that dreadful man -"

"Cesari's might have an opening!" Lettie glowed, obviously feeling that she had hit on the perfect solution.

"And one of my spells, just to see you safely on your way -"

The long and short of it was that Sophie found herself sitting on the front of Mrs. Fairfax's delivery cart, watching the rumps of the cart horses work in silken tandem while the driver flicked the reins and whistled cheerfully, and clutching a jar of honey. The jar was the disguise spell. Mrs. Fairfax had not wanted to layer another spell on top of Sophie herself - "Might make things worse, dear, for all I know - might make things worse" - and so she had put it on the jar instead, and all Sophie had to do was hang on to it until the cart got to Market Chipping and delivered its crates of honey to Cesari's. Sophie had already had a thousand visions of the jar slipping out of her hands and smashing to bits under the wheels. In her pocket was a letter from Lettie Hatter, recommending her great-aunt as one of the finest pastry chefs of Lettie's acquaintance. Which, Sophie thought sourly, considering the Hatter circle of acquaintances, was not stretching the truth by much.

Sophie did rather well at Cesari's. After the first week, during which she burnt a pot of donuts and Mr. Cesari threw her letter of recommendation in the fire, she remembered the niceties of pastry cooking and got the hang of taking the fragile pastries off the heat at just the right moment. This pleased her so much that, of course, she talked to them.

"Aren't you the most charming pan of croissants I've ever seen!" she exclaimed to a proud, puffy group of one dozen - pale tan, with just the faintest hint of brown crisp around the edges. She saved one out to eat for herself and thought that Mrs. Fairfax's honey gave it the perfect amount of sweetness.

"You're a pie to make one's day," she told an aromatic cherry pie, sniffing appreciatively as she took it out of the oven. She meant it, too. The pie was almost glowing with flavor. Cesari's certainly did use the finest ingredients.

"You, on the other hand," she told a puffy, proud-looking stuffed Danish with fancy slits all down its sides so that the bright fruit filling showed against the white crust, like an expensive suit, "you look good on the outside, but you're a walking disaster on the inside, aren't you?"

She plunked the Danish down on its tray and set it on the cooling shelves. She didn't want to look at it any longer. Martha, filling another tray with bagels, laughed and took it out front. Sophie never went out front during open hours for fear of running into Michael.

A few minutes later, there was a commotion in the shop. Sophie tiptoed out of the oven room to peep over the counter. Apparently the Danish had exploded all over a customer the second he touched it. The bright fruit filling was plastered down the front of his dapper black suit and gobs of filling had lodged in his greying hair. The old gentleman was shouting at Mr. Cesari - who had his hands up and was doing his best to placate the man - and then stabbing his finger at the tray and back toward the oven room. Sophie slunk away to the back to make up a batch of cookies. She hoped Mr. Cesari had forgotten about the donuts by now.

It wasn't long before the commotion migrated into the back. Sophie looked up from her stirring to see the upset customer pushing his way into the oven room. Mr. Cesari was right behind him, making helpless little movements in a way that showed he'd been quite unable to stop him.

"You!" the customer thundered, impaling Sophie with his stabbing finger. "You baked this!"

Sophie buried her clenched hands in her apron and gave a nervous curtsey. Mr. Cesari will fire me on the spot, she thought sadly. It's the only way for him to keep the customer.

"I thought so," he said in a perfectly normal voice. He flicked at the front of his suit and the pastry filling dribbled off, and there was Howl, calm and spotless. "Only _you_ could make a disaster like that, Sophie. I heard it calling to me the instant I walked into the shop. Though I must admit I had no idea you were so upset with me."

Sophie found her voice. "You! How did - when did -"

"When I heard that Cesari's pastries had become almost magically delicious, it wasn't hard to know where to find you." Howl shrugged. He looked tired. There was even a shadow of stubble on his jaw.

Mr. Cesari was gaping, imagining no doubt what ruin an angry wizard might wreak on his bakery. Howl ignored him. "Michael and Calcifer have been worried sick about you. Won't you at least come by to see them?"

"Well..." Sophie unwound the apron from her hands. The memory of Michael's worried face _had_ been tormenting her.

"Come on then." Howl took her wrist and, with a nod to poor Mr. Cesari, towed her out into the fresh morning sun of Market Chipping. She could see the castle on the hills above, shedding smoke rings that rose thoughtfully into the sky before dissipating. "No time like the present. You're not getting any younger, you know."

_AN: The story could drop back into Chapter 9, or you could imagine a snowball effect leading to an entirely different series of disasters before story's end. Either way is fun!_

_**Disclaimer:** This story not created, acknowledged or endorsed by Diana Wynne Jones - seeing as she's dead - or her agents/heirs, to whom all relevant characters and trademarks now belong. No infringement is intended. **Several Directions at Once** itself is fan domain and may be freely recopied and archived._


End file.
